Dividend valuation,trading and transactions costs: the 1997 partial abolition of dividend tax credit repayments

Although UK resident tax-exempt shareholders lost the right to repayment of tax credits on dividends paid by UK resident companies in July 1997, they could continue to receive tax credit repayments in respect of dividends received from Irish resident companies until December 1998. In July 1997 the rate of tax credit on Irish companies' dividends was 21%, and this was reduced to 11% in December 1997. We obtain insights into the incentives and behaviour of UK tax-exempt investors in response to these changes in the relative ‘tax attractiveness’ of investments in Irish resident companies. We find that only at its highest rate, 21%, was the level of dividend tax credit on Irish companies' dividends sufficient to induce changes in UK tax-exempt shareholders' investment strategies; and that the propensity for dividend capture by tax-exempt investors is heightened when the dividend tax credit yield is of the order of 0.8 or more and dividend yield is of the order of 2.6% or more.     

Intervening with victims of intimate partner violence

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a critically important public health problem. Physicians and other health care providers have a unique opportunity to help IPV victims, not only in treatment but in prevention of this devastating problem. Health-care providers should receive thorough and on-going training and administrative support for identifying, appropriately treating, and referring IPV victims to IPV advocates and other community-based resources with whom the provider has developed a close working relationship. In the clinical setting, health-care providers may intervene early as the victim’s first and only point of contact concerning the violence in their lives. In the larger community, health-care providers can become spokespersons and educators to help change social norms and can get involved in coordinated community responses to ensure cohesive actions by all societal sectors to prevent IPV in their communities.     

Catching up in new wave technologies

In the last quarter of the 20th Century, new technologies and competitive practices challenged earlier opportunities for entry from a low skill base and the pursuit of an incremental process of catching up. In traditional manufacturing industries, these changes pose few problems at the entry level, though they render catch-up processes more difficult to sustain. In "new wave technologies", such as those growing out of biotechnology, the science base, patent intensity and systems' embeddedness have raised the barriers to entry and narrowed opportunities for incremental catching up from a low skill base. This paper explores these changes and their implications for traditional entry and catch-up strategies in developing countries.     

It's OK to pay well,if you write well: The effects of remuneration disclosure readability

We examine whether, and how, shareholders’ votes in the Say-on-Pay (SOP) are affected by the readability of the Compensation Discussion and Analysis (CD&A). Despite the SEC's Plain English requirement, qualitative disclosures on executive remuneration are generally long and complex. Extant evidence on whether low readability results in higher or lower shareholder dissent in the SOP, however, is ambiguous. We resolve this debate by demonstrating that the effects of readability on SOP voting are heterogeneous; while obfuscation may reduce dissent when CEO compensation is close to “normal” levels, diminished readability results in increased scepticism when pay levels are clearly excessive. The moderating role of readability is most pronounced for firms with less sophisticated shareholders, consistent with readability acting as a heuristic cue. Our results are robust to propensity score matching, and are less pronounced (1) when shareholders have less time to review the CD&A, and (2) when shareholders are distracted by competing AGMs, suggesting they are driven by readability, directly. Overall, our results highlight that greater use of Plain English in remuneration disclosures can have a substantial persuasive impact on shareholders.     

The unique predictive ability of sex-role identity in explaining women's response to advertising

This study explores and compares the separate contributions of masculinity, femininity, and androgyny in explaining women's response to modern and traditional sex-role portrayals in print advertisements. It also considers whether sex-role identity captures unique predictive information above and beyond specific demographic variables. This study consisted of a field experiment among 200 adult women; each respondent was exposed to several carefully prepared print ads. The findings suggest that sex-role identity is a useful predictor of women's response to advertisements. Moreover, masculinity is the driving force in explaining women's response to the tested ads. Androgyny, however, adds no incremental predictive ability. The findings indicate that sex-role identity does capture new information, unexplained by specific demographic variables. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Alternative measurement approaches to consumer values: The list of values and the rokeach value survey

Two methods of measuring consumer values, the List of Values and the Rokeach Value Survey, are compared. Both involve some social desirability responding but both have convergent, discriminant, and empirical validity for consumer research. The List of Values may be preferable for some types of research because it detects more daily influence in people's lives and because it is simpler to administer.     

The Japanese Example of Indirect Vouchers

The producer controlled relative mediocrity of schooling in the West makes a stark contrast with the high standards of education in Japan where the consumer is supreme. Professor Richard Lynn, of the University of Ulster, calls for the fillip of competition to improve standards by extending parental choice.